Apple makes the best consumer laptops. For me, there's absolutely no denying that this is the case. Apple has had this lead over the competition since the iBook G3 Dual USB 12.1" and 14", and has never lost it. Right now, the rumour mill is abuzz about Apple supposedly prepping to launch a MacBook Pro with a retina display - 2880x1800.

Why? I am all for better technology, but I have a 17" MBP. 1080P is ok on it, but anything finer than that wouldn't be easily readable. What's the point of the higher res if you just have to increase font size to be able to see what your doing? Would it be just a good to have a function on your system where you can zoom out to a larger desktop and then zoom in to the app you want to work in?

You don't need to increase the font size; a 12 point font should be displayed 12 points high.

Unless, of course, the software doesn't correctly handle display sizes and resolutions. Most older software fails at this, so something incorrectly labeled as 12 point is displayed at some unknown height.

For some reason, people like to blame the problem on displays instead of poorly designed software.

The solution isn't increasing the font size, it's getting the software to stop lying about the size.

There are no DPI settings for the web, now are there? I have a 1600x900 display and I have to view all websites zoomed in 150% in firefox. I use an addon that makes that zoom level stick. For the most part websites look ok. Images, however, look blurred because they aren't designed for high resolutions. So it's not just desktop applications that have to be updated. Websites do too. The problem is that lots of people are still at 1024x768 and so web developers face a tough choice.

There are no DPI settings for the web, now are there? I have a 1600x900 display and I have to view all websites zoomed in 150% in firefox. I use an addon that makes that zoom level stick. For the most part websites look ok. Images, however, look blurred because they aren't designed for high resolutions.

Folks doing mobile application and web development targeting mobile devices will already be familiar with how this is being dealt with "correctly".

Many Android and Windows Phone devices have a 150% "scale factor" between logical or CSS pixels and the physical on-screen pixels. The iPhone 4 Retina display and some newer Android phones (eg Galaxy Nexus) have a 200% scale factor. This is roughly equivalent to zooming in 150% or 200% in a modern browser -- all the graphics are larger as well as the text, and indeed graphics that aren't designed for it may end up a little blurry because of the scaling.

Using scalable SVG graphics can resolve this but still isn't common (for one thing, Android's standard browser hasn't supported SVG on phones until the latest version 4.0!). CSS media queries can be used to check the logical DPI or scaling factor and switch in higher-resolution assets; you'll see this for instance on Google's mobile Gmail interface or Facebook's touch.facebook.com, where the icons come up at full resolution.

Currently, most desktop operating systems don't have an equivalent system-wide setting. Mac OS X has one (HiDPI mode in 10.7), but it's still "experimental" and you need to use debug tools to switch it on; only some software will show you things rendered at full resolution, while many other apps -- like old iPhone apps on an iPhone 4 -- will render at lower resolution and get zoomed up. If the rumors are true, presumably they'll make that enabled by default on the new laptops with super high-res screens, and -- like on iOS -- app developers will start adopting support for it at their own pace, while in the meantime many apps show pixelated but correctly sized.

Windows may now have an equivalent, though I haven't tested such things in ages -- traditionally you can change the logical DPI which bumps up font sizes and the sizes of things measured in "dialog units", but anything using fixed pixel sizes still ended up reaally tiny if you made the kind of large adjustment you'd need for 200+dpi screens.

Why? I am all for better technology, but I have a 17" MBP. 1080P is ok on it, but anything finer than that wouldn't be easily readable. What's the point of the higher res if you just have to increase font size to be able to see what your doing? Would it be just a good to have a function on your system where you can zoom out to a larger desktop and then zoom in to the app you want to work in?

You're getting this all wrong. All that is required is to set the DPI settings in the OS right, so that a 12pt font is the correct size. 12pt is meant to be a physical size to match paper fonts.

But it is funny you mention fonts, because such a high resolution display would be awesome for them. If you can't see the pixels, you don't need anti-aliasing, and you get perfectly smooth fonts with no fuzziness to them.

Vector based UI and text are not hindered by higher resolutions, the text and UI elements will display as they should at lower resolutions. In cases like this higher DPI providers finer detail rather than smaller UI/Text elements.

The point of hiDPI is to increase the usability of small screen computers. Some people can afford and transport 17 inch MacBook Pros with no problems; other people can't. With hiDPI, the 13 inch Pro allows those with good eyesight to see and edit the entire page of a Word document or a PDF, as well as use the full functionality of many other programs that require a lot of screen space. HiDPI will make the 10" iPad a real work machine, as it has changed the nature of the iPhone.

With hiDPI, the 13 inch Pro allows those with good eyesight to see and edit the entire page of a Word document or a PDF, as well as use the full functionality of many other programs that require a lot of screen space.

Exactly. I would be very excited to see this change. I have hated that resolutions stopped going up and in fact reverted to lower resolutions with the introduction of 16:9 screens. It is like computer suddenly became optimized for watching movies instead of working with documents or consoles.

Way back in the 90's it was easy to find 15" laptops with 1440x1050 resolutions but in recent years even decent models with bigger screens have had stuff more in the range of 1300x800. I have hated it.

I am typing on a Dell laptop with a 1920x1200 display which I absolutely love but it is not nearly as common as I would like.

Also, even for people that are just going to scale up the fonts, higher resolutions make sense. A good quality printed book is working from a raster image where the text is rendered at 1600 dpi or better with 2400 dpi quite common. Think about that. Fifteen inches at 2400 dpi is 36000 pixels. A laptop sized screen would ideally be many thousands of pixels on each dimension.

Yeah, problem is they stopped making those years ago, the best being the T221-DG5 3840x2400@48Hz Yeah, that may sound like a really low refresh rate, but really, what GPU can push that res at over 48FPS 48Hz in current applications consistently?

But whats nice is it's 2x normal film rate. Either way though, hen they where current they cost as much as a car...

Since Apple's support in their operating systems for larger characters OS-wide is still in the dark ages? I mean land sakes, even X11 WM's do a better job than OSX in that department.

Actually, OS X's HiDPI mode seems to "do what it says on the tin" in a way that I've never seen on Windows or X11.

The difference is that we're not just talking about bumping up font sizes. Having large fonts doesn't help much when every button, icon, and toolbar is half the size you expect, making everything too small to use!

If you switch in HiDPI mode under Lion, you'll see that some apps -- such as Safari -- actually do work pretty well, rendering large fonts in beautiful full resolution *and* rendering large graphics. Web sites that have designed for high-resolution graphics (using SVG or CSS media queries to engage higher-res images) have nice graphics too; others will look much like they would on an iPhone 4 -- sharp text, but graphics a little pixelated. (Warning: anything with Flash on it seems to engage a compatibility mode that puts everything back to low-resolution pixelated horror.)

Other apps that aren't fully updated may show partially or entirely at a lower resolution... but they'll show at the proper *size*, which is more important for having a usable program if you've actually got a 13" 2560x1440 panel or whatever hypothesis is coming...

Traditionally, Windows' DPI setting does change the physical size of things that are measured in "dialog units" (based on font sizes), but anything that uses pixels will often happily render tiny tiny tiny tiny stuff. X11 traditionally has been similar. If either Windows or X11 has improved in this regard I'll be pleasantly surprised!

So far the only other OSs I've seen that do this "correctly" are mobile-focused ones such as Android, where higher-density displays have been on the mass market for a couple years already.

If the laptop is less than $600 you can bet the display will be along the lines of 1368x768 - if that! That includes 15.4 and even some larger ones. It's pathetic!

Over 3 years ago I got a Lenovo T61p with a 1920x1200 display (or was it 1920x1250? I don't remember for sure) in a 15.4 inch screen. It's a great laptop. I still have it and use it for some special projects.

Recently I had the opportunity to upgrade laptops and I wanted another 1920x1200 display in a 15" form factor. After looking the _only_ 1920x1200 laptop I found was the 17" MacBook Pro.

I was looking at primarily Lenovo and Dell, at their business grade machines; I've had good success with them, especially longevity. Others, including HP/Compaq tend to put even more bloatware/crap than Dell or Lenovo, and/or the machines didn't last as long. I wanted something that had a good likelihood of lasting more than 3 years. For example, somewhere I still have a Dell D505 laptop that works (other than intermitent color issues). I don't even know how old that machine is.

In the end, after looking at all the options, I ended up going with a 15" MacBook Pro with the 1680x1050 anti-glare screen. It was just about the best screen I could get on a laptop. The 17" would have just been too big for portability.

Sure I found some 1920x1050 displays in several 15" laptops, at premium prices, but nothing that was as comparable to the overall hardware package in the MacBook Pro. To be fair, the Lenovo options were pretty compelling, but after I specced out a system the way I wanted, it was more than I paid for the MacBook Pro. [I waited for Apple to release the newer CPU speed-bumps and lower the prices on the refurbished laptops; I saved about $600. If it weren't for that, the Lenovo would have been cheaper.]

I find it really sad that my 3 year old Thinkpad seems to have been the zenith in laptop screen displays. And I find it even worse that in the interest of getting "wide screen" monitors on laptops the screen resolution has gone down hill so bad. It used to be fairly easy to get 1280x1024 screens - now it's 1024x600, 1280x768, etc. The vertical resolution has dropped, and the horizontal has just barely been bumped. Unless you spend serious money.

It will be interesting to see what Apple does here. I hope that they release some new higher density laptops. Especially in the 13" form factor. I almost went with a MacBook Air 13" just for the higher resolution screen. In the end I wanted the power and performance I could only get in the MBP line.

The zenith consisted of 6-10 year old NEC laptops (I forget the models, but most were Japanese market only) and a very rare medical configuration of a 7 year old ThinkPad (based on the R50p).

I've actually got that panel, a 2048x1536 15.0" IPS panel, swapped into a T60p chassis, along with a T61p motherboard (because Lenovo never made a 15.0" 4:3 T61p, but the 14.1" 4:3 T61p motherboard fits in any T60p chassis after filing some metal away, although without the dialup modem card).

I agree with gsyb. You can't really bring into the conversation models for specialized medical use, ones only available offshore, or noshed together. No, the true apogee was in 08 - 09, with the Dell Precision, the Thinkpad, or my Clevo M860TU. They all had WUXGA displays at a gorgeous 146 DPI, and 16:10 ratio, with matte surface. And, of course, decent video subsystems.
Honourable mention to the Thinkpads with 1600x1200 displays. I thought their 4:3 ratios were the best for productivity, but their video chips were lacking.
The culprit is the stupid 16:9 ratio the screen manufacturing monopoly forces on us. Even the modern 16:9 1920x1080 look lame at 15.6 size. The use of 1366x768 is almost criminal!
I say bring back 4:3 screens! Boost resolutions to 2400x1800 or better, and give me a reason to upgrade. Now, I live in fearcthat if my trusty Clevis were to die tommorow, my only choice is the MacBook Pro, at a paltry wsxga 1680x1050!

I guess the problem is there just aren't enough of us to justify the cost to keep the 16:10 with high resolution screens alive.

Sure I settled for 1680x1050 on the MBP, which is less than the 1920x1080 I could have had, but when I customized the Lenovo systems to match what I got on the MBP (remember I bought refurb and saved a LOT over the list price), the MBP proved to be a better value for me.

If the Lenovo had offered 1920x1200 screen (or better) in the 15.4-15.6 form factor, I would have paid the the price and bought the Lenovo in a heartbeat. Especially in the W series with 4 DIMMs for memory expansion and a max capacity of 32 gb.

I almost went for the 17" MBP just to get that same screen resolution, except sanity finally took hold and I realized just how big of a beast that would have been. The 15" machine is big enough to make using it on an airplane a challenge at times, the 17" would have been insane in that circumstance.

Now there's an interesting thought. A battery powered, headless Mac Mini server with a MacBook Air as a remote screen. Power and portability, leave the mini in the bag, just pull out the Air.

I guess the problem is there just aren't enough of us to justify the cost to keep the 16:10 with high resolution screens alive.

More specifically, you and many here whine that the vast majority of 'commoner' users are perfectly happy with the present widespread resolutions, basically topping at 1080p, and won't fund your craving (how dare they?!).

"Very high res" screens didn't really become that much rarer[1] than they were (always very rare, popping up here and there sometimes), didn't really become that much more expensive[2]. They primarily just stayed in place - and looking increasingly "bad" especially in comparison to how the presently popular sizes galloped forward, rapidly dropped their prices and dramatically increased availability.

Which means 1080p as the "high baseline" on typical screens, and on smaller - something between that at best, and what would be a proportionally lower res.
If not having "very high res" screens at mass-market prices is so unbearable... too bad, you just have to wait a short decade+, maybe two; standard manufacturing processes should be dictated by then by "postHD" TVs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_High_Definition_Television ...or will 7680x4320 at mass-market prices also prove not good enough by then?
(though TBH, I suspect the present HDTV might as well end up "good enough" - like it ended up with CDs - in which case ...oh well, pay up!)

1. Perhaps when seen as % vs. the exploding, in the last decade, overall number of "normal" PCs; plus maybe becoming more niche by the virtue of many past "target users" coming to conclusion that they are happy with "standard 1080p"*
2. Heck, inflation alone could be responsible for large part of perceived increases ...while (*for various reasons) their economies of scale ~stayed in place at best; possibly also competing for manufacturing resources etc. vs. what really sells & keeps the production lines going.

You also need a 15.0" 4:3 T60 or T60p chassis, though, to house the screen.

And, your T61p must be a 14.1" 4:3 model - widescreen need not apply.

I'm almost 100% sure there wasn't a 4:3 T61p. By the time the T61p rolled around, all you could get was a widescreen display with an nVidia chip (which, if produced before Summer 2008, will eventually fail). The best case scenario is to find a T60p 4:3 (which is limited to 3GB of ram), or find a T61 with 4:3 ratio (only available with Intel GMA 965) and retrofit the UXGA screen.

Sony offer a 1600x900 13.3" display in their SA series - about 140dpi.

While the current SA35 is about $2000AUD, you can get the previous model, SA35 for less than $1300AUD, with negligible difference in specifications, just a slightly slower i7 (0.1GHz) and a smaller HDD (110gb less).

I've spent a lot of time looking for laptops with high resolution screens and I came to a conclusion that the limiting factors are software support for UI scaling and power consumption. Especially the latter became the issue as people started expecting light and thin devices working on a battery for hours - hence the recent set back in laptop screen development.

Luckily (for now, at least) there is a "Full-HD" holy grail so we can expect to have 1920x1080 everywhere at some point. It may take some time to go beyond that point, though.

I still won't buy anything from those companies. They support SOPA and have a long history of being shitty in just about every respect other than catering to uninformed ignorant "consumer".

The only way to show them that you think they suck is to not buy their products. For me there are more important things than having newest shiny gadget.

Apple nor Microsoft has made any official statement regarding SOPA to my knowledge. The only "claimed" support for SOPA was the fact that they are members of the BSA which was originally for SOPA. The BSA has since withdrawn their support for SOPA.

So on what remaining basis do you claim that they officially support SOPA?

They support SOPA and have a long history of being shitty in just about every respect other than catering to uninformed ignorant "consumer".

Ignorant consumer? Typical left-wing arrogance; everyone's wrong except you. You're assuming that by not taking a stand, they are supporting it. Heaven forbid that they may be taking the smart approach of waiting to see how things turn out, rather than picking a losing side.

"You're either with us or against us." ffs...

For me there are more important things than having newest shiny gadget.

Like what? Indulging in a bit of armchair-activism? Get off your high-horse, freetard.

Ignorant consumer? Typical left-wing arrogance; everyone's wrong except you. You're assuming that by not taking a stand, they are supporting it. Heaven forbid that they may be taking the smart approach of waiting to see how things turn out, rather than picking a losing side.

If you'd pull your head out of one dark place, you'd be (perhaps) able - in the context of SOPA - to remember, say, DMCA
...and go ask a random 100 people what is the meaning, what are the consequences of DMCA. Go ahead, actually see how that mythical "smart approach of waiting" (just a few short years in this case) works out, instead of spewing your ideological BS.

But, in regards to the rampage you went on - lets just freehand list some major industries, some major dynamics, few specific products etc.; some keywords to contemplate.

Sex industry, tobacco industry, housing bubbles, "defence" industry (Orwell couldn't make that one up), people choosing P4 over A64, tasty-even-if-not-quite-healthy foods, insanity with (lack of) sustainability ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_foot... ), entertainment industry, all the waste we don't care much about, positional or even veblen goods, toy industry, bottled water, skin whitening (and general cosmetics industry with its claims, how it creates artificial demand*), fashion industry (*likewise, for cheap rags; nobody cares about essentially slaves who make them), dead oceans (in comparison to what they were, almost swarming with cetaceans according to old records; generally, we exterminated most of megafauna), conspicuous consumption.

Generally most of those, lots of our overall activity, boils down to maximizing endorphins and similar within the brain (quite often taking short-cuts) ...any chimpanzee can make such "consumer choices" - heck, my cat can. That's totally biologically determined; sex drive is present in animals with numbers of neurons counting in thousands; simple maximizing of pleasure based on previous experience doesn't require much more.

Go through the list of cognitive biases, that is our primary mode of operation, that is what we really are. Our "free will", our "choices" are shown by fMRI to be often just post-hoc rationalisations of unconcious impulses (in some studies, researchers were able to reliably pinpoint what the answer, what the "choice" will be before fully meaningful question was even finished)

PS. Since you apparently don't realize the basics of what you really did in life, what seems to define your self-perception to a large degree (just from yours "Business-owner and former ADF-Officer (not SAS despite my icon; I've only had the priviledge of working with these fine men)")...
...you were a grunt of one of most "lefty" (whatever the governing coalition is) countries on the planet.
As a general rule, "we" employed you to protect that way of doing things - to fight with, on average, against the people largely coming from the kind of "traditional" ideologies you confused yourself into thinking you represent.
BTW, do you know how military is financed? That's right, socialism ...you freetard (also in other areas - apparently, by your own standards, freeriding on the business possibilities given by comfy, stable, educated, healthy etc. society)

Technically, OSX supported true DPI independence since OSX 10.4. I still have some screenshots with a 150 dpi Firefox vs. Safari. Safari looked perfect while Firefox had huge problems. They abandoned the arbitrary dpi because the applications that were not native Cocoa (Xcode + Interface Builder) didn't scale properly. They went for the iPhone4 style DPI doubling in Lion which is easy for them to implement and looks correctly on all apps.

There was a time when Apple made shitty products and this is one circumstance where we have to give them credit. If you want a really good display in a computer, you most likely need to get an Apple computer. Not only do their screens tend to be the best, they tend to be the only good screens among their peers. This sucks, but this is what happens when one manufacturer can charge a lot more money than its peers.

I'm glad Apple is always trying to provide nice screens. They even provide some 16:10 ones. Anything thinner than 16:10 can suck my

For years the Apple Cinema displays had crazy high quality requirements that the other companies didnt Have to match. The people that owned Macs were those in the graphics industry. When apple expanded their markets back out of the 90s niches they were in a unique position where they already had the agreements in place with the manufacturers and their userbase to keep happy. Who was going to buy a new mac with a worse screen?

For years the Apple Cinema displays had crazy high quality requirements that the other companies didnt Have to match.

Except that this is a myth. Apple's Cinema Displays are good displays, no argument here, and for a long time have been the most affordable of the higher-end displays. Recall the surprise when Apple cut the prices for the 20" and 23" CD to less than 2000$ in 2004 (or so)? You couldn't get such a good monitor for that little money before. But they were never quality leaders.

There are several manufacturers that Apple would have to match and exceed to claim this crown, e.g. Eizo, LaCie or NEC.

If you want a really good display in a computer, you most likely need to get an Apple computer. Not only do their screens tend to be the best, they tend to be the only good screens among their peers.

Apple's 27" Thunderbolt Display and 27" iMac use exactly the same 2560x1440 IPS panel (made by LG) as a number of other monitors.

The main difference is that (in the UK at least) Apple's 27" display is more than double the price of some others using an identical panel. All Apple offer for an extra £500 are aesthetics and a few extra features (like the built in webcam), not superior image quality.

Why would people who buy Apple products complain about Apple's indecent and non ethical behavior? My take on it - either don't support, or don't complain.

This is a truly brilliant insight. No-one who uses a company's products should be allowed to complain about their business practices. Actually, it applies to more than companies.

Why should people who carry on living in countries be allowed to complain about them? They should not. Its wrong. All you North Koreans and Chinese dissedents? You're still living there, so shut up. All you former Soviet refuseniks?

The same applies to religions. You carry on going to church, don't complain about the child abuse cases. Of course, if you leave, its none of your business anyway, what's the matter with you, trying to tell other people what to do.

So folks, if you use Apple, everything it does is above reproach. But if you don't use Apple, why are you going on and on about a company whose products you don't use? What is it to you.

Typing this from my old vaio,, 1920x1080 on a 13".. that's pretty good if you ask me, and that was before Apple. Sure Apple may make a better model in 6 month, but Sony did well so far, and they might also make a better one in 6 month.

Most importantly, mine's high DPI and I can type on it right now. And since month and month!

Moreover, the latest incarnation of this Vaio is lighter than Macbook AIR and arguably faster than a top of the line MacBook Pro (same i7, 2 cores vs 4 cores, but way, way faster SSDs Talking 500+byte/s writes and nearly 1gb/s reads here). Still retaining the high DPI!

It's also quieter, oh, and cooler. And has an external GPU. And a fingerprint reader. And a 14H battery sheet addon. And so on.

I feel you. Try to explain those to someone who starts with "Apple makes the best consumer laptops." Right.

After seeing enough shapes and sizes, I'm not planning to buy an Apple laptop in the foreseeable future. Previous was Thinkpad, current Dell and Toshiba, next Asus.

Regarding screen resolutions, it's really frustrating, but it's still possible to find usable ones (sometimes at ridiculous prices though). But come on, most of them have 15-17+ sizes! Geez. Whoever started to propagate childish resolutions should be kicked out of the solar system for good.

Strange.... Acer is the first to market with the ultrabook form factor so how can the Viao be better than the MBA?

Umh, because the Sony Vaio Z-series (that's what the OP is talking about) is not an ultrabook? Ultrabooks are consumer products.

The Vaio Z is an UMPC/UMW (ultra-mobile PC/workstation), a form factor that's around a lot longer than the ultrabook, quite a lot more expensive than a Macbook Air or Pro and targeted at a very small niché of professionals.

Apple has had this lead over the competition since the iBook G3 Dual USB 12.1" and 14"

Hm. What about the Powerbook 100? Or the PowerBook G3 series? In the nineties Apple was well regarded for their portable computers, it didn't just start with the white iBook G3.

That being said, I'd very much welcome higher DPI panels for laptops, especially for the smaller form factors like the 11" and 13" Airs. Would make small font sizes all the sharper and make their readability better as well as reduce the need for anti aliasing on bigger font sizes and make them less fuzzy.